By precisely the same argument Lord Penzance proves that Bacon (not Ben, as Mr. Greenwood holds) wrote for the players the Dedication of the Folio. {282b} “If it should be the case that Francis Bacon wrote the plays, he would, probably, afterwards have written the Dedication of the Folio, and the style of it” (stuffed with terms of law) “would be accounted for.”  Mr. Greenwood thinks that Jonson wrote the Dedication; so Ben, too, was fond of using legal terms in literature.  “Legal terms abounded in all plays and poems of the period,” says Sir Sidney Lee, and Mr. Greenwood pounces on the word “all.” {283a} However he says, “We must admit that this use of legal jargon is frequently found in lay-writers, poets, and others of the Elizabethan period—­in sonnets for example, where it seems to us intolerable.”  Examples are given from Barnabe Barnes. {283b} The lawyers all agree, however, that Shakespeare does the legal style “more natural,” and more accurately than the rest.  And yet I cannot even argue that, if he did use legal terms at all, he would be sure to do it pretty well.

For on this point of Will’s use of legal phraseology I frankly profess myself entirely at a loss.  To use it in poetry was part of the worse side of taste at that period.  The lawyers with one voice declare that Will’s use of it is copious and correct, and that their “mystery” is difficult, their jargon hard to master; “there is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.”  I have not tampered with it.  Perhaps a man of genius who found it interesting might have learned the technical terms more readily than lawyers deem possible.  But Will, so accurate in his legal terms, is so inaccurate on many other points; for example, in civil and natural history, and in classic lore.  Mr. Greenwood proves him to be totally at sea as a naturalist.  On the habits of bees, for example, “his natural history of the insect is as limited as it is inaccurate.” {284a} Virgil, though not a Lord Avebury, was a great entomologist, compared with Will.  About the cuckoo Will was recklessly misinformed.  His Natural History was folklore, or was taken from that great mediaeval storehouse of absurdities, the popular work of Pliny.  “He went to contemporary error or antiquated fancy for his facts, not to nature,” says a critic quoted by Mr. Greenwood. {284b} Was that worthy of Bacon?

All these charges against le vieux Williams (as Theophile Gautier calls our Will) I admit.  But Will was no Bacon; Will had not “taken all knowledge for his province.”  Bacon, I hope, had not neglected Bees!  Thus the problem, why is Will accurate in his legal terminology, and reckless of accuracy in quantity, in history, in classic matters, is not by me to be solved.  I can only surmise that from curiosity, or for some other unknown reason, he had read law-books, or drawn information from Templars about the meaning of their jargon, and that, for once, he was technically accurate.